For over ten years, Le Cagibi has been operating as a cafe, vegetarian restaurant, independent venue, and casual “living room” in the Mile-End. Above all, Le Cagibi has aimed to provide a comfortable, unpretentious space for the local community. Accordingly, we’ve welcomed both neighbourhood locals and people passing through Montreal—comprising a wide variety of artists, musicians, students, youths, families, and other everyday people—while serving healthy, affordable food and providing a venue and gallery for emerging artists. As a workplace and venue, we’ve aimed to give space and opportunities to under-represented and/or marginalized peoples, as well as to those just starting out in the job market.

We’re excited to announce that after years of planning, Le Cagibi is about to transition into a workers’ co-op, composed of a newly formed team of ten founding members and a board of five who will work collectively to run the business. Le Cagibi has always prioritized community access and stability, as well as employee work experience, in order to present an affordable and anti-oppressive alternative (“hold-out”) space in an increasingly gentrified neighbourhood. Moving to a co-op structure is a choice that reflects our commitment to ethical alternative business practices.

The current location of Le Cagibi is facing a substantial rent increase from the new owner of the building we have occupied since our inception. As a co-op, we’ve reflected at length on this increase to our rental costs and concluded it is simply no longer financially possible for the business to stay at our much-loved location on St. Viateur at St. Laurent. This was difficult news to absorb, but in a stroke of luck, we managed to find and secure a new location only five blocks north. Thus, we’re thrilled to announce Le Cagibi will be moving in Spring of 2018!

In our new location, we will be working towards providing an accessible space, better working conditions for our employees, and a more comfortable experience for customers—without sacrificing any of the charm of Cagibi’s current environment. While the limitations of the space will force us to move away from evening live-music acts, we are excited to focus our programming on community events, gatherings, and art performances.

To complement this exciting move, we will be launching a new menu (though maintaining some old favourites!) reflecting our continued commitment to keep our selections vegetarian, healthy, and affordable. Our goal is to keep the ease and essence of Cagibi very much alive in our new locale, and we hope that you will join us in celebrating this new transition.

We can’t do this without your support! For all of those who have been regular customers, show attendees, promoters, or community supports over the years, we need your help. Some of you wrote your essays, poems, or first novels at our tables. You had your first dates at Le Cagibi, booked your band’s first show there, used the internet (from the MySpace era when we opened through the Facebook years, to the Tumblr/Instagram present), obsessed over the muffins, and chatted with us on the regular.

All those people who have been a part of Le Cagibi for so long, we are asking for your support to make this transition successful. Some of you are still as broke as you always were and we totally understand that, while others have built the kinds of lives that allow them to give back to the community with ease. We gratefully welcome donations to our crowdfunding campaign from everyone, for as much or as little as you can provide. If you can only afford the price of a cup of coffee, we’ll appreciate your digging deep to help us. If you wrote an award-winning ad campaign in our corner window table and can spare a couple hundred, we’ll appreciate that equally!

Further, we’d love to hear from community members able to offer trade in kind towards renovation, relocation, publicity, and other facets of our move and re-establishment a few blocks north. Your help would go along way towards making this project a reality! And please help spread the word. We’re committed to keeping Cagibi alive and thriving and we appreciate any amount or service you might be able to contribute! With your help, we look forward to continue offering a friendly, welcoming community space for everyone, with food, atmosphere, and character like nowhere else in Montreal.